The American Democracy Legal Fund, run by liberal power brokers David Brock and Brad Woodhouse, wants the Justice Department to investigate whether Walker sponsored and ensured passage of mine legislation in exchange for campaign contributions from northwest Wisconsin mine developer Gogebic Taconite.

“Wisconsin voters deserve to know whether their state’s highest elected official made a devil’s bargain with Gogebic Taconite, selling out Wisconsin in order to secure his own political future,” the liberal group states in a widely distributed press release.

INTERESTING TIMING? The left-leaning American Democracy Legal Fund files a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice raising campaign ethics violations against Republican Gov. Scott Walker just as Mary Burke, the Democrats candidate for governor, is embroiled in a plagiarism scandal.

ADLF, it seems, is trying to make political hay with mainstream media accounts a few weeks ago asserting that court documents indicate illegal coordination after the developer of the proposed $1.5 billion mine dumped $700,000 into campaign funds to defend Republicans in Wisconsin partisan recall campaigns in 2011 and 2012.

“Less than a year after Gov. Walker won the recall election, he signed into law mining legislation that was extremely favorable to the interests of Gogebic Taconite, allowing the company to build what has been described as ‘the world’s largest open-pit iron ore mine,” the group writes in its letter.

But the legislation doesn’t “allow” the company to build a mine, it merely streamlines the state permitting process. Gogebic Taconite is a long way from state Department of Natural Resources approval, and still must go through a more involved regulatory approval process at the federal level, with bureaucracies controlled by the Obama administration.

That Walker and almost all Republican lawmakers supported the legislation should come as no surprise: They have, for several years, been pushing for the resumption of iron ore mining in northern Wisconsin as a way to boost the Badger State economy and create jobs in an area that was hardest hit by the recession.

“Brock was elected chairman of the group’s board … after laying out a multifaceted expansion intended to turn the group into a more muscular — and likely partisan — attack dog, according to sources familiar with the move,” Politico noted in a piece last month.

Their letter to the Justice Department comes as Burke, lagging just a bit behind Walker in the latest Marquette Law School poll, is caught in a firestorm of controversy following revelations last week that her campaign lifted large portions of the Democrat’s jobs plan from proposals by other failed Democratic candidates for governor.

Burke campaign spokesman Joe Zepecki told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Friday that a consultant blamed for pilfering the passages was let go as soon the camp was made aware of the story, first broken by BuzzFeed.

Zepecki defended the swiping, telling the newspaper the sections represented “fewer than 10 paragraphs of a 49-page plan.”

Burke’s campaign has not answered repeated requests for comment from Wisconsin Reporter.

The governor’s spokeswoman did not return an email request for comment.

Republicans blasted Burke on Friday following the revelations, with some calling on the candidate to drop out of the race. Walker did not join that chorus.

“It’s a sad day for Wisconsin when the Democratic nominee for Governor misleads voters by offering a plagiarized jobs plan, in which she has staked her entire candidacy,” said Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign manager Stephan Thompson in a statement. “Wisconsin deserves better, and its (sic) clear that Mary Burke cannot be trusted to lead our state.”

Joe Fadness, executive director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, quipped that Burke needs a lesson in business ethics “because even eighth-graders know that you shouldn’t copy the work of others.”

M.D. Kittle is bureau chief of Wisconsin Watchdog and First Amendment Reporter for Watchdog.org. Kittle is a 25-year veteran of print, broadcast and online media. He is the recipient of several awards for journalism excellence from The Associated Press, Inland Press, the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association, and others. Kittle's extensive series on Wisconsin's unconstitutional John Doe investigations was the basis of a 2014 documentary on Glenn Beck's TheBlaze. His work has been featured in Town Hall, Fox News, NewsMax, and other national publications, and his reporting has been cited by news outlets nationwide. Kittle is a fill-in talk show host on the Jay Weber Show and the Vicki McKenna Show in Milwaukee and Madison. Contact Kittle at [email protected]